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Post by Farrar on Dec 21, 2015 21:23:49 GMT -5
... It was he [Weisinger] who abused Roy Thomas during the 2 weeks Roy worked for DC, driving Roy to look for work at Marvel in the 60s It was he [Weisinger] who made fan-turned-pro E. Nelson Bridwell's life in the office a living hell... Roy was in fact hired to replace Bridwell, who'd taken the job as Weisinger's assistant just a year earlier. In interviews RT has said that Nelson was gracious in showing him the ropes. We all know what happened--after a couple of weeks Roy left for Marvel. Weisinger, while furious at the "betrayal", had no choice but to retain Bridwell (who ended up staying at DC well past Weisinger's 1970 retirement). ENB was about 10 years older than Roy was but just as interested in older comics and in the concepts of continuity and shared universes. His Secret Six remains one of my favorite Silver Age series. |
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Post by Farrar on Dec 21, 2015 21:37:15 GMT -5
Weisinger was also of a generation who believed--rightly--that the bulk of their readership turned over every five years or so. The lucrative licensing revenue was also dependent on these readers, and licensing was for toys, coloring books, board games, etc. They also believed that the books had to have the widest possible appeal to sell through on the stands, which meant casulat readers being able to pick up and enjoy an issue. Continuity may have been "cool," but by the mid-70s, a lot of people at DC (and Marvel) expected the industry to go under any minute. Exactly. Weisinger's target audience comprised kids and as MDG says, there was a built-in turnover in that type of audience. Stories had to be clear and appeal to young readers. Think of those stories as fairy tales or short stories (as opposed to say, a mid-1960s Marvel mag, which was more like a chapter in a long ongoing novel). There's a reason why the Superman family of books dominated sales for so long--the formula worked, and for quite some time. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Dec 21, 2015 22:16:34 GMT -5
Weisinger was also of a generation who believed--rightly--that the bulk of their readership turned over every five years or so. The lucrative licensing revenue was also dependent on these readers, and licensing was for toys, coloring books, board games, etc. They also believed that the books had to have the widest possible appeal to sell through on the stands, which meant casulat readers being able to pick up and enjoy an issue. Continuity may have been "cool," but by the mid-70s, a lot of people at DC (and Marvel) expected the industry to go under any minute. Exactly. Weisinger's target audience comprised kids and as MDG says, there was a built-in turnover in that type of audience. Stories had to be clear and appeal to young readers. Think of those stories as fairy tales or short stories (as opposed to say, a mid-1960s Marvel mag, which was more like a chapter in a long ongoing novel). There's a reason why the Superman family of books dominated sales for so long--the formula worked, and for quite some time. But there was still some continuity there - like Krypton was sequentially fleshed out over several stories, each building on the last. It's worldbuilding as much as strict Roy Thomas style continuity (and I assume that a lot of it came from E. Nelson) but it was there. |
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Post by Action Ace on Dec 21, 2015 22:30:06 GMT -5
Ok, the BEST part about old DC Comics Letter Pages is that the editors (or whoever answers) are flat-out jerks like 80% of the time. It's glorious. And I'm usually on the editor's side. |
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Post by Action Ace on Dec 21, 2015 22:31:43 GMT -5
Keep in mind that many of the letters in Weisinger's early columns were faked to allow him to plug an upcoming story so you can't always be sure whether he's responding to real readers or not. Cei-U! I summon a word to the wise! I need a Classic Comics Christmas for editing, so I can vote Mort #1!  |
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Dec 21, 2015 22:46:00 GMT -5
Exactly. Weisinger's target audience comprised kids and as MDG says, there was a built-in turnover in that type of audience. Stories had to be clear and appeal to young readers. Think of those stories as fairy tales or short stories (as opposed to say, a mid-1960s Marvel mag, which was more like a chapter in a long ongoing novel). There's a reason why the Superman family of books dominated sales for so long--the formula worked, and for quite some time. But there was still some continuity there - like Krypton was sequentially fleshed out over several stories, each building on the last. It's worldbuilding as much as strict Roy Thomas style continuity (and I assume that a lot of it came from E. Nelson) but it was there. I'd call it consistency more than continuity. They were stand alone stories, any one of them simple for a 1st time reader to pick up. A concept such as the bottle city of Kandor would be re-introduced every 6 months or so and be consistant with what was previously implied and something added to it and then it would be another 6 months until you saw it again. I wouldn't term that a continuity, just consistancy |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 28, 2015 0:19:26 GMT -5
Brave and the Bold #78 'In the Coils of Copperhead' Haney/Brown  Plot: Wow, is this a humdinger! Copperhead has come to Gotham, and Batman is one step behind him. The pressure is on, as he caps his crime spree off by stealing the visiting Queen of England's Tiara! Batman knows he has to lure Copperhead out, but how! Suddenly, Wonder Woman and Batgirl turn up, and both very publically proclaim they love Batman, and start fighting over his affections. The attention seems to draw Batman away from crimefighting... but Copperhead suspects a trap. Things get more and more intense, when finally Copperhead pulls the trigger on a big heist, the helmet of Montezuma, which Batman has a special duty to protect. Copperhead's '7th sense' (Because 6 is so Spidey) warns him off at the last minute, as Batman thanks the girls for playing along and helping him. Batman returns to Wonder Woman and Batgirl, to ask them to crank it up, (expecting Copperhead to be watching) and they do. Copperhead rushes back to complete the heist, just as Batman wanted. But, alas, the girls has decided they REALLY love him, and don't let him go.. thus Copperhead steals the helmet. The papers let Batman have it, but he has one last chance... a tracking device. Wonder Woman and Batgirl are still at it, though, and only snap out of it when Wonder Woman nearly kills Batgirl by knocking her off a building. The three team up to find Copperhead in the swamp, where they narrowly defeat him. Batman sends them off with a 'don't call me, I'll call you'. The end! Notes: Wow, that was just too crazy not to be awesome! Wrong on so very many levels, but so much fun! Also, I really like Bob Brown's Wonder Woman... not many artists draw her as muscularly as she should be, IMO.  |
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Post by Hoosier X on Dec 28, 2015 1:29:51 GMT -5
Brave and the Bold #78 'In the Coils of Copperhead' Haney/Brown Plot: Wow, is this a humdinger! Copperhead has come to Gotham, and Batman is one step behind him. The pressure is on, as he caps his crime spree off by stealing the visiting Queen of England's Tiara! Batman knows he has to lure Copperhead out, but how! Suddenly, Wonder Woman and Batgirl turn up, and both very publically proclaim they love Batman, and start fighting over his affections. The attention seems to draw Batman away from crimefighting... but Copperhead suspects a trap. Things get more and more intense, when finally Copperhead pulls the trigger on a big heist, the helmet of Montezuma, which Batman has a special duty to protect. Copperhead's '7th sense' (Because 6 is so Spidey) warns him off at the last minute, as Batman thanks the girls for playing along and helping him. Batman returns to Wonder Woman and Batgirl, to ask them to crank it up, (expecting Copperhead to be watching) and they do. Copperhead rushes back to complete the heist, just as Batman wanted. But, alas, the girls has decided they REALLY love him, and don't let him go.. thus Copperhead steals the helmet. The papers let Batman have it, but he has one last chance... a tracking device. Wonder Woman and Batgirl are still at it, though, and only snap out of it when Wonder Woman nearly kills Batgirl by knocking her off a building. The three team up to find Copperhead in the swamp, where they narrowly defeat him. Batman sends them off with a 'don't call me, I'll call you'. The end! Notes: Wow, that was just too crazy not to be awesome! Wrong on so very many levels, but so much fun! Also, I really like Bob Brown's Wonder Woman... not many artists draw her as muscularly as she should be, IMO. I first read this in the 1970s when it was reprinted in The Brave and the Bold #116 (I think). I loved it! Three or four years ago, I got a copy of the original issue of Brave and the Bold #78! It rocks so hard! Bob Brown is awesome! I read it again a few days ago for the millionth time. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Dec 28, 2015 3:32:41 GMT -5
Yay, team-up books!
There was a tendency for the early B &B s with female leads to follow the structure of romance books, which makes for a freakin' strange reading experience.
The Supergirl/Wonder Woman story in # 63 is even stranger.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 29, 2015 15:09:31 GMT -5
Yeah, it was definitely reprinted in a 100 pager not too long after... I was looking up Cooperhead, and he had far fewer appearances historically than I thought.
If fact, you really can't even classify him as a Batman villain... he's never been in any book more than a couple times.
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Post by Prince Hal on Dec 29, 2015 15:45:43 GMT -5
Keep in mind that many of the letters in Weisinger's early columns were faked to allow him to plug an upcoming story so you can't always be sure whether he's responding to real readers or not. Cei-U! I summon a word to the wise! I've read that Parade Magazine likewise, and for the same reason, fakes the questions in the "Walter Scott's Personality Parade" column. It's painfully obvious: "Hey, is washed-up and forgotten movie star Claude Bahls ever going to make another movie?"" Funny you should ask. Claude took a few decades off, but the movie bug bit him again and his new action flick, "Inevitable," in which Claude plays an over-the-hill disco dancer caught in a Mideast spy conspiracy, opens next Friday." |
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Post by Prince Hal on Dec 29, 2015 15:58:59 GMT -5
Ok, the BEST part about old DC Comics Letter Pages is that the editors (or whoever answers) are flat-out jerks like 80% of the time. It's glorious. And I'm usually on the editor's side. Weisinger was notoriously nasty. Schwartz wasn't, though; in fact, he referred to Guy Lillian III as "our favorite Guy," and named super-villain tailor Paul Gamba after one of his regulars, Paul Gambaccini (sp?). For a while he even gave away original art and scripts to the best letter-writers each issue. For years, Kanigher's letters pages in the war comics were all about weapons, vehicles, ranks, and militaria, with kids (we assumed) asking questions about German self-propelled guns and how many crewmen were on a minesweeper. Lots of mail from soldiers, too. That stopped, maybe in the late 60s? Kubert was more like a Dick Giordano type (meaning serious and informative) in his pages. My favorite letters pages were Murray Boltinoff's. He was unfailingly polite, and tended to use snippets more than longer letters so that he could get in more comments. He always seemed to care about the things that interested the fans. He even ran a kind of swap shop in Tomahawk, where fans could offer issues for sale or trade. I think George Kashdan had done the same in Blackhawk. |
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Post by realjla on Dec 29, 2015 18:51:47 GMT -5
I have some 70s and 80s DC war comics. Kubert continued to mix snippets of letters from fans (and soldiers) with his own comments/essays digressions. Very few of the "regulars" from other books' lettercols turned up in the war books. Boltinoff eventually stopped printing letters altogether, and his text pages reverted to their 1950s and 60s format of essays about military history and/or weapons specs.
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Post by MDG on Dec 30, 2015 12:50:16 GMT -5
....He even ran a kind of swap shop in Tomahawk, where fans could offer issues for sale or trade..... During one of the periodic panics about teens (and others) sharing pictures on the internet and predators being able to track them down, I was re-reading some Archies and thought how odd it was that no one thought twice about printing full names, ages, and home addresses in the Archie Club News. |
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Post by Prince Hal on Dec 30, 2015 13:18:57 GMT -5
....He even ran a kind of swap shop in Tomahawk, where fans could offer issues for sale or trade..... During one of the periodic panics about teens (and others) sharing pictures on the internet and predators being able to track them down, I was re-reading some Archies and thought how odd it was that no one thought twice about printing full names, ages, and home addresses in the Archie Club News. Exactly. It really was a different time. Marvel ran home addresses, too, IIRC, in the early years. |
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